@dePARA I am fairly certain shine already has options to shuffle by kdr or spm. I think it is great if a server community wants to try something like this, like hbz used to. If that makes them happy, then I think that is good.

You should look into what @Tik is doing on the sudamerican server. He is using ns2+ data from wonitor to get per server skill metrics and doing interesting things with it. He has some very interesting graphs showing hive skill variance too.

From my perspective UWE has been trying to both with what little resources they have given to the game. They don't have an AAA budget, let alone an indie game budget. They have the budget of a game that has been out 6 years. I want to say, don't half ass two things, whole ass one thing. I just don't think they have the resources to do it. Unlike many of the people on the forums, I guess I am just happy they are at least trying even though I may not like what they end up doing.

Modrequest: Make a "Alternative shuffle mod" based on Observatory https://observatory.morrolan.ch/leaderboard
This Site is tracking all the data you need for an real skill based shuffle.
K/D, Accuracy and hive skill are the most important.

If only the hive server was open source, I'd have done this by now.

I know there's at least one mod out there where it sends a list of steam IDs out to a web server, and the server responds with a shuffle configuration while taking into account team-specific skill and K/D.

Modrequest: Make a "Alternative shuffle mod" based on Observatory https://observatory.morrolan.ch/leaderboard
This Site is tracking all the data you need for an real skill based shuffle.
K/D, Accuracy and hive skill are the most important.

If only the hive server was open source, I'd have done this by now.

I know there's at least one mod out there where it sends a list of steam IDs out to a web server, and the server responds with a shuffle configuration while taking into account team-specific skill and K/D.

I don't see why an open source hive server is necessary. There is observatory or even local wonitor data to work with. Shamess of the old tactical freedom server used local data to calculate a players mmr based on Microsofts patented trueskill. Trueskill is open source for non commercial use. There are plenty of options.

Also, in my testing hive was actually more accurate than trueskill at ranking players at least compared to typical skill metrics.

From my perspective UWE has been trying to both with what little resources they have given to the game. They don't have an AAA budget, let alone an indie game budget. They have the budget of a game that has been out 6 years. I want to say, don't half ass two things, whole ass one thing. I just don't think they have the resources to do it. Unlike many of the people on the forums, I guess I am just happy they are at least trying even though I may not like what they end up doing.

The point is: you can use the observatory data to find the 4 carry player , 2 for each team. Then shuffle 50% of the players based on hive stats, the remaining ones by average KDR of the last 5 rounds.
That was the HBZ shuffle. (or something near like that)
The important point is: find the carrys and split them.

Ontop it used the ns2stats data to ban smurfs like mentioned above.
Based on stats, smurfs are easy to identify.

Modrequest: Make a "Alternative shuffle mod" based on Observatory https://observatory.morrolan.ch/leaderboard
This Site is tracking all the data you need for an real skill based shuffle.
K/D, Accuracy and hive skill are the most important.

If only the hive server was open source, I'd have done this by now.

I know there's at least one mod out there where it sends a list of steam IDs out to a web server, and the server responds with a shuffle configuration while taking into account team-specific skill and K/D.

I don't see why an open source hive server is necessary. There is observatory or even local wonitor data to work with. Shamess of the old tactical freedom server used local data to calculate a players mmr based on Microsofts patented trueskill. Trueskill is open source for non commercial use. There are plenty of options.

Also, in my testing hive was actually more accurate than trueskill at ranking players at least compared to typical skill metrics.

It doesn't have to be open source but it would make it much easier. Implementing stuff from scratch is a pain.

Modrequest: Make a "Alternative shuffle mod" based on Observatory https://observatory.morrolan.ch/leaderboard
This Site is tracking all the data you need for an real skill based shuffle.
K/D, Accuracy and hive skill are the most important.

If only the hive server was open source, I'd have done this by now.

I know there's at least one mod out there where it sends a list of steam IDs out to a web server, and the server responds with a shuffle configuration while taking into account team-specific skill and K/D.

I don't see why an open source hive server is necessary. There is observatory or even local wonitor data to work with. Shamess of the old tactical freedom server used local data to calculate a players mmr based on Microsofts patented trueskill. Trueskill is open source for non commercial use. There are plenty of options.

Also, in my testing hive was actually more accurate than trueskill at ranking players at least compared to typical skill metrics.

It doesn't have to be open source but it would make it much easier. Implementing stuff from scratch is a pain.

Is it really from scratch? As I understand it, it can be a lot easier to begin by adjusting someone elses code rather than beginning from scratch. Forgive my ignorance if I am wrong; I am not a programmer. There are multiple other mods in the past that have a custom shuffle,or even a custom mmr system you could look at.

Shuffle is shine and is open source already. Are you saying that you want to make an alternative skill system or a shuffle system?

Post edited by Nordic on September 2018

From my perspective UWE has been trying to both with what little resources they have given to the game. They don't have an AAA budget, let alone an indie game budget. They have the budget of a game that has been out 6 years. I want to say, don't half ass two things, whole ass one thing. I just don't think they have the resources to do it. Unlike many of the people on the forums, I guess I am just happy they are at least trying even though I may not like what they end up doing.

Shuffling by spm might work, but kdr is not accurate at all. You can camp all day in useless spots without doing any dmg to your enemy tech, have a really good kdr, and lose because you cared too much about it.

Shuffling by spm might work, but kdr is not accurate at all. You can camp all day in useless spots without doing any dmg to your enemy tech, have a really good kdr, and lose because you cared too much about it.

Going by SPM wouldn't be any different from KDR. If anything it might even be worse.

I've had games where I accomplish absolutely nothing on marine to contribute to the win, yet my score will be super high.

Wouldn't the best solution be to use all three? Win rate, KDR, and SPM?

Score per minute is a good measure for how productive you are, which is related to your overall skill. Server administrators can set up shuffle to use score per minute already.

Kdr is a good measure for how good at getting kills you are, which is related to your overall skill. Server administrators can set up shuffle to use kdr already

You could do all sorts of fancy math trying to use kdr and spm to balance with, and it would work about as effective as hive skill does. A good example of this done well would be ns2stats elo formula.

Edit: Would anyone like to see a comparison between how well hive skill ranks players compared to kdr, spm, and other metrics? By rank I mean that the highest player would be #1, the second highest would be #2 and so on. It is a simple method, but you can see how well hive compares to metrics like KDR or SPM in ranking players from best to worst.

Post edited by Nordic on October 2018

From my perspective UWE has been trying to both with what little resources they have given to the game. They don't have an AAA budget, let alone an indie game budget. They have the budget of a game that has been out 6 years. I want to say, don't half ass two things, whole ass one thing. I just don't think they have the resources to do it. Unlike many of the people on the forums, I guess I am just happy they are at least trying even though I may not like what they end up doing.

Edit: Would anyone like to see a comparison between how well hive skill ranks players compared to kdr, spm, and other metrics? By rank I mean that the highest player would be #1, the second highest would be #2 and so on. It is a simple method, but you can see how well hive compares to metrics like KDR or SPM in ranking players from best to worst.

Yes! In particular I would be interested if hive skill level directly correlates with kdr and spm, or if there's different "player profiles", i.e. players who have a high skill level because they shoot good, and players with a high skill level because they hit the objective good.